


Sentient: A Collection of Short Stories

by I_Bought_A_Headache



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Horror, Monsters, Other, Shorts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 23:32:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16459151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Bought_A_Headache/pseuds/I_Bought_A_Headache





	Sentient: A Collection of Short Stories

Two infantile forms, connected at the fleshy elbow, lived in the compact womb of Georgia Finn; and had been for six plodding months. Like foetus vampyrs they would suck of her sustenance like it couldn't possibly run out. She was weaker as the days pushed on.   
Tiny mounds of nervous tissue in their skulls named them. The foetuses were Sydney and Layn. This gray matter tissue in their skulls- which they wouldn't call brain until much later- seemed connected, just as they were at the elbow. They could communicate. And that they did, near constantly in fact.   
The bigger brother, Sydney, had dreams- yes, even womb children without fingernails or teeth have dreams. Sydney, just like other infantile beings, he dreamt. He dreamt of a bright light, and purple headed mushrooms.   
What were mushrooms, Layn would ask, as he kicked experimentally at the darkness around them. He heard Georgia groan and he looked back at his womb brother.   
I don't know, Sydney would say and then distract himself with the sound of blood rushing that encompassed them. Life in the womb was good. Sydney seemed to know so much though, and Layn knew of nothing but soft mother tissue, surrounding him and blanketing him as he slept.   
The womb was dark when the feotuses would sleep, and even darker when they woke up. The womb brothers liked the dark, though something told Layn the dark was bad. Layn believed once they left this place the dark would no longer comfort.   
Sydney believed they never would leave this darkness, he believed this was their final destination. Layn didn't, because Layn only knew the womb; Sydney knew more.   
Sydney knew about the mushrooms- whatever they were. He knew about a foreign concept of light. Layn knew only warm and dark; himself and his womb brethren. Warm and dark forever.   
Layn would argue that this couldn't be the end, that this being the end wouldn't explain what womb was; or what Georgia was. It wouldn't explain the voices and sounds outside. Layn believed life after the dark and warm.   
Two months passed. The foetuses grew fingernails; still conjoined at the elbow by grey pink flesh. Mushroom dreams continued, Sydney reckoned it a curse. Layn thought it as proof of light.   
More words from the outside could be heard in the warm and dark. Words the twin foetuses didn't understand. They rolled them around in their brains, and got nothing. Layn started to trust the twin brsin less and less.   
Mushroom dreams squeezed and wrapped around Sydney's brain and each day he complained. The womb got smaller and they grew bigger.   
One night something wrapped itself around the feotuses. Something that was not there. Something that suffocated them, and then let go.   
Moments later a feeling set in, starting at the flesh connecting them, and stopping at their fingernails. The womb brethren knew not what it was. The only word Layn could think to describe it was: good. Sydney, in the way he had for months, dismissed the feeling so new to his brother.  
However, as colours swirled into their irides and surged down their ciliary nerves, ignoring was no longer an option. Layn looked at Sydney, and awed at the sudden translucency of his foetus twin, he shrieked. Only in his head, but it jarred the other one nonetheless.   
Whatever has gotten into you, Sydney lashed. The brother did not answer for he simply couldn't find anything to say.   
The womb was bright. Blindingly so with colours who's names seemed to imprint on Layn the moment they flashed before his little eyes. Purple, green, red, black, orange. He had never seen these before, Sydney had never told him these words, and yet Layn knew.   
Whatever was happening to him, it was a twist of a word that came to his head right then, that he'd heard a voice from outside once say. This was beautiful. This was it. It seemed to last for hours. Days even.   
The womb got smaller, the walls around him a screaming neon blue. Sydney's voice ground into his brain with the words "tear, tear, tear, tear".   
Layn took his fingernails, and running them down the blue wall womb, he did just that.   
Tearing through the womb wall left bits of flesh under his growing fingernails. With Sydney egging him on he scratched more and more until wails from the outside world could be heard and the womb was filling with thick crimson ooze slowly.   
There was no light as he scraped away the fleshy matter, and then his fingernail ripped the last layer. Tore into the host and there was the World, a moon high above looked at the foetuses through big leafy trees.   
Georgia had collapsed, now bleeding to death, she was unconscious. Sydney and Layn crawled from the bloody wreckage and Layn used his gorey fingernails to rip the umbilical cords.   
A month underdeveloped and yet more capable than most two year olds. But they couldn't walk. And they could not speak outside of their twin brains.   
Crawl, Sydney said, and Layn did just that, digging his gorey fingers into the dirt and pulling his brother, attached at the elbow, with him through the forest floor. They unearthed worm creatures that slithered curiously around their tiny fingers.  
Layn took a look back at the host, Georgia, with big black eyes. She was dead, he decided, or at least she would be soon.   
Her eyes bulged out of their sockets, black pupils blown so wide that the green irides underneath were nearly gone. Her belly looked as though a wolf might have ripped into it. Layn took some odd pride in being that capable.   
She's dead, Sydney said emotionlessly and tugged his brother further. The air smelled thick with the gore and filth covering both the host and them; but beneath that was the earthy tone of mud and vines. Vines that trailed up every tree until no longer was the trunk brown but instead bright green.   
Layn tried to bring up his rightfulness on knowing that the warm darkness of the host womb wasn't the end, but Sydney wouldn't tolerate it, dragging his brother through the mud.   
Sydney seemed to know where they were headed. Layn didn't, still half in shock of the earth around him, and half intrigued by the way the trees seemed to pulsate. Pulsate as though they had hearts. For a minute he convinced himself he heard a heartbeat; and then there wasn't one.   
The wind in the trees was a forest song, and Layn felt his throat restrict as he tried to make sounds to match the song. Sydney kept pulling.   
Layn looked at his brother, grey pink skin covered in gore and mud. He assumed it only made sense that he would look the same.   
The first thing Layn didn't like about this new environment was the cold. He almost longed to stitch himself back into the dark warm womb of the host. Georgia would be cold soon though. Things don't stay warm in death, he told himself. He'd never heard about death before leaving the womb, but now in the stark white of it all, he understood. There was life, he was alive, grey but alive; and there was death. Cold death.   
Sydney kept pulling him all the while through twigs and mud and overgrown yellow grass. Layn didn't understand what this was, he didn't understand anything except that Sydney had a set destination and his eyes were playing tricks on him.   
The good feeling that had tingled through his every vein earlier was now gone, replaced with a buzzing feeling and an ache in his stomach. Sustenance. He no longer fed from the host body.   
We're almost there, Sydney reassured. Layn wanted to ask where "there" was, but figured prying would do no use if the stronger brother hadn't shared before now.   
Up ahead there was a street, yellow lights flooding from lamps illuminated the tarmac. Sydney pulled his brother faster. Layn tried to keep up, dragging his infantile form as best as he could.   
Sydney stopped as they came upon the street. Layn collapsed into the mud and let it seep into the scrapes covering his knees. He thought to ask what they were waiting for, but stopped as soon as a figure turned the corner.   
Sydney perked up, eyes as dark as those which belonged to his brother, skin as grey as stone. When Sydney moved Layn did his best to not let the other drag him. Feet rendered useless, he used his arms to pull himself into a sitting position.   
The figure came closer and even under yellow lamp glow, neither foetus could see anything but a black outline of a very tall being.   
Layn looked around and his eyes caught a coupling of purple plants sprouting out of the mud, he grabbed at one and ripped it from the wet earth.   
A mushroom, Sydney stated though Layn hadn't asked.   
Food, Layn looked at him hopefully. Sydney only nodded. Layn shoved it into his mouth and tried to chew, but with a lack of teeth it proved rather difficult. As the figure reached speaking distance Layn swallowed the crushed mushroom. It had tasted bad, but it was different than the sustenance the host had given him.   
The figure was a man, a tall one with grey skin just like the brothers. Layn heard his brother introduce them, and he heard the man talk back; without any opening of mouths.   
Sydney talked and talked and Layn tried to swallow more of the purple mushrooms, only stopping when the sky turned hunter green.   
As Layn looked at the green sky his brother continued to talk and the man talked back. He seemed to know Sydney and Sydney acted the same way toward him.   
The forest song was back, louder now as the wind grew heavier. It got into Layn's ears and burrowed into his brain. Sydney stopped talking to the tall man, the silence snapping Layn away from his wind song.   
He looked at Sydney, studying his face for anything resembling an emotion. Instead he was only met with dead eyes and gorey face. He looked at the patch of mushrooms in the ground and picked another. Moments passed.   
We must go Layn, Sydney finally said.   
Where, Layn used his muddy, blood crusted, fingers to tear pieces of the purple plant and set them on his tongue.   
You're not allowed to ask questions, Sydney shook his head and tugged his arm, pulling the weaker twin onto the tarmac, away from the mud and purple mushrooms.   
The tall man crouched down and took the grey infantile forms in his arms.   
He walked down the tarmac, black dress shoes hitting loudly against the ground, smacking sounds out into the night.   
Layn's last thought before drifting off to exhausted sleep was of the host woman.   
Sleep peacefully with the worms, Georgia.


End file.
